Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is to return to the Mahon tribunal tomorrow to resume giving evidence about his personal finances.
Mr Ahern is due to appear for a protracted sitting of the tribunal in an effort to complete his evidence, having already attended the tribunal last Thursday and Friday. The tribunal will sit between 10am and 5pm, instead of its usual 10.30am to 4pm.
The tribunal is conducting an inquiry into four lodgements in 1994 and 1995, all involving foreign currency cash, as well as Mr Ahern's statement that he withdrew £30,000 sterling in cash from AIB in early 1995.
The bulk of the time during Thursday's and Friday's sittings was taken up with the responses of Mr Ahern and his lawyers to correspondence from the tribunal in the November 2004 to April 2007 period.
Mr Ahern has been questioned about the first of the four lodgements and it could take more than one day to cover the remaining lodgements and to allow for cross-examination.
The former chairman of the tribunal, Mr Justice Feargus Flood, said he would be inclined to refuse Mr Ahern part of his legal costs because of the nature of his responses to the tribunal. Speaking on Newstalk radio's Lunchtime with Eamon Keane programme, the retired High Court judge said concerning delays in information forthcoming from those currently before the tribunal: "if I was sitting I'd trim the costs. I wouldn't refuse them the costs, but I'd trim the costs in relation to periods when they were just bloody well messing. Now when you're bloody well messing I'd have to make my mind up about particular days or particular events."
Asked about the comments by the Minister for Defence, Willie O'Dea, at the weekend, where Mr O'Dea criticised the tribunal, Mr Justice Flood said the tribunal was not acting outside the law but was "acting correctly within the terms of reference".
"Undoubtedly the payment to the Taoiseach was unusual, in fact virtually unique. On his evidence to date it was for his personal benefit and basically for his need to acquire a suitable residence for a taoiseach. So far, on the evidence to date no benefit accrued to the donor save bed and breakfast and in convivial circumstances.
"If a person in political life receives a payment, the public can have concern for the circumstances underlying the donation. That concern must arise that Bertie Ahern has been reticent in relation to the receipt of certain sums of money. It must be said there is no suggestion to date that he has given any benefit to his donors other than bed and breakfast," the judge said.
